Make A Website

If you are looking to make a website from scratch then you are at the right place. Creating a personal website using one of the most used platform will take less than 30 minutes. You simply need to follow step by step methods described below.

Most of the people think that creating a website is very complicated. However they don’t know that it’s one of the easiest part of starting a website. Making a website used to be more complicated and tough some 10 years back.

More than a decade ago, people used to learn programming languages such as HTML, CSS and graphics software like Photoshop to create their website. Learning the coding was the hard part for majority of people.

But now as of 2015, you can build a website in less than 30 minutes. You don’t need to know any programming languages. You will be able to create and run a professional good looking website by following below steps.

There can be multiple reasons to open a website for you. Blogging, promoting a product, personal website, portfolio website,resume website,ecommerce website etc.. are some of the reasons. You can setup your website during these 30 minutes and then you can turn the website into anything you like.

There are numerous themes and templates (Free and Paid both) available to choose from. You can use a theme which supports your idea. If you want a personal website for blogging then there are number of themes available that you can install and test it. If you don’t like it then change it using another until you are satisfied.

If you are going to follow the below guide then you will be able to set up your website from scratch in less than 30 minutes. In case you get struck somewhere then you can email me using my contact page. I will solve every query for you.

Make a Website – Overview

Who can follow the below tutorial –

Students

Working Professionals

Anyone with Internet knowledge

Anyone with internet knowledge who can follow step by step tutorials can follow the below method.

Things that you are going to learn with this tutorial:-

How to get a Domain name and Web Hosting for your website

How to Install WordPress ( No Coding Skills required)

How to make your website look professional by using awesome themes

How to add plugins/widgets/pages and improve security on your website.

Resources to learn more things on WordPress.

You also need to know that you can have free blog or website using many other free platforms like Blogger.com, WordPress.com, Weebly or Wix etc… However making a website on these websites will not give you full control over your websites. You will be having limited functionalities. They have internal drag and drop website builders which you can use. You can not use specific themes for yourself.

It’s always better to choose a platform which gives you full control over your website.

Follow the below steps one by one to get started.

Step 1 – Website Building Platform

There are many website building platform available on which you can make your website. You don’t need to have any coding or design skills such as HTML, CSS, Flash or Dreamweaver to use anyone of them. WordPress, Joomla and drupal are 3 most famous website building platform. Check out the image below:

As you can see WordPress is the most used website building platform. It’s being used by more than 50%. Below are some of the reasons as why WordPress is so popular to create a website:

WordPress is totally free.

You don’t require any coding skills.

You can make website on anything from selling your own product to creating an image gallery of your favorite tourist places.

There are lot of plugins available. Installing the plugin on your website will add additional functionality. You can find high quality plugins literally for everything that you can think of.

Lot of themes : There are lot of themes available. You can choose between free and paid themes. Paid themes give you a more professional look according to your idea and they cost a very little amount.

Multiple users can be created to write on your website.

WordPress website run beautifully on mobiles and tablets as well.

Technical Support: There are close to 7 million WordPress websites today. You will find multiple answers for every single problem that you face. The support community on official WordPress itself is huge. Ask a question and there will be many people trying to solve your query.

In fact, this website is also created on WordPress platform. I recommend you to stick with WordPress for making your website from scratch.

Step 2 – Domain Name and Hosting

WordPress is totally free but you need to pay for domain name ( your website name) and Hosting (this is where your website data is stored so that it can be available 24*7). It will cost you $3-$4 a month. However the whole process of purchasing and setting it up within minutes is much easier than it sounds.

If you don’t want a domain name then your website will look unprofessional. Free website give you website names like yourwebsite.blogger.com, yourwebsite.wordpress.com Seriously nobody wants such website name. It should be more like yourname.com or yourname.net or yourname.in It look more cool,professional and personal website.

Here are few things that you should consider for your domain name:

Make sure the domain name is related to you, your hobby, your business or simply your name.

Write atleast 4-5 names in a piece of paper. Number of them will be already taken by someone so you need atleast 1 good domain name.

Don’t put number and dashes in the domain name.

Choose .COM during selection process. Avoid other domain names. If .COM is not available then you can use variation in your written domain names. You can use words like best, top, guide etc. If you are making a personal website for resume or other thing then try to include first letter of middle name. Anything that people can remember easily.

Don’t choose other extensions such as .INFO, .BIZ, .US etc.

I have mostly usedwww.Bluehost.comto purchase domain names and hosting. Based on my research and experience, I recommend you to use Bluehost. In fact, it’s recommended by the official WordPress.org website. Millions of websites are being hosted on it and it’s one of the best choices by many people for below given reasons.

#Support – Believe me or not but they have a 24*7 phone,email and chat support. Support staff is very technical and they will solve your problems in a very easy manner. Many times they will do it from their end as well.

#Reliable – Bluehost gives anaverage uptime of 99.9%. It’s regarded as the best hosting service. You can check the average uptime here for this year as well. It simply means your website will never go down.

#Affordable – They provide one of the cheapest hosting packages. It’s barely $3.95-$5.95 a month. It depends on the package that you choose. If your website gets high traffic then you can upgrade the package.

#Easy to Use interface – The best part of Bluehost. Many hosting have a highly confusing user interface. Nobody wants to get annoyed after paying money because of bad user interface. Bluehost provides you the best user interface that you can use with no confusion.

#WordPress recommendation – The official website of WordPress recommends it. Certainly because they are the best in the market for hosting your websites.

It’s time for practical!

As you are just starting to make your personal website, I would recommend you to chooseBasic Starter Package of Bluehost. There are plenty of other hosting companies out there on internet. Bluehost is totally on my use and recommendation. I am suggesting you because of the satisfaction that I have over the years.

Now you can see the number of features being provided to you on the above screen. You can also see that there is ANYTIME Money-Back Guarantee. So you don’t have to loose anything at any point of time. If you are not satisfied, simply cancel it. However, Bluehost is a world class company and serve millions. They won’t let you down.

NowHead Over to Bluehostand Click on GET STARTED NOW button on the screen. Here is the next screen that you see on your computer:

Select the STARTER PLAN which is more than enough for beginning. If at any point of time you decide to make more website then you can upgrade your plan from existing one and money will be adjusted between the two and you will be upgraded to newer one.

You are also getting a $50 marketing offer. Basically it’s a coupon through which you can advertise your website for $50. Isn’t that cool? You are basically paying close to nothing for creating a website =D if we adjust this money.

I assume here that you don’t have a domain name. If you purchased domain name earlier from somewhere else, we will discuss the same in the last of this tutorial. Start inputting the domain names that you wrote on the paper. Start with the most favorite one.

If someone already has that domain name then you will receive a message saying ” The domain name is currently owned by another hosting account.” Now try again with the next favorite written domain name. Once you click on Next and it’s available then it will directly take you to the next screen.

I am going to search my name here to show you as an example. Once you reach successfully on the next screen, start filling your personal information. Here is how screen looks like:

Scroll below and do the following things on the form:

Choose the Starter Plan for 12 Months. Actually the more the time, the less will be the price. I recommend you to choose for 1 year. It’s totally up to you.

UNCHECK every other option in the list. You don’t need these in the beginning. Secondly, you get them any time you want. Checking them will increase the overall cost. To make it simple, I am trying to minimize the cost here.

Scroll below and fill in the BILLING Information. Check on “I confirm …. ” and Click on NEXT.

Bluehost will now verify your credit card details. You can choose other payment methods as well.

It will next give you the option to “Select the Upgrades That Best Suits Your Needs“. Skip this option as you don’t need to increase the cost right now.

Click the Complete button at the bottom of the page and wait for 2-3 minutes. It takes little bit of time.

A “Welcome to Bluehost – Congratulations” message will appear shortly on the screen. It will also ask you to choose a password for your account.

Click on “Create Your Password” button. Choose a strong password. You can also use password generator option to generate a random strong password for you.

Now Check the option that says “I confirm I have read and agree to TOS….” You already did this thousands of times while installing software.

Click on CREATE button now. It will create your new Bluehost account.

It will take few minutes to create your account. There are chances that you receive an error message because of slow internet connection. However you don’t need to panic and all. In the worst possible scenario, you can call Bluehost 24 hours service at 18884014678. It happens in few cases only. Rest assured everything will work fine.

Upon successful creation of your account, you will be redirected to the Bluehost login screen where you need to login to your domain. It will be automatically field. If it’s not then fill in your domain name. Type in the password that you just entered in account creation step. Click on Submit/LOGIN.

Ignore all the offers coming up on your screen and Click on HOSTING at top left hand corner. It will take you to Control Panel. Close the pop up which offers you to help in setting up your website.

The screen that you see on screen is the Control Panel or cPanel.

Step 3 – One Click WordPress Install

WordPress install is very simple. You don’t have to upload anything to the server. You don’t have to create any databases. It will take just a minute to install WordPress on your purchased domain.

Click on Install WordPress option in the Website Section as you see it in the above screen. Upon clicking it, you will be presented with the below screen. Now Click on Install option.

You need to select you domain in the next screen. Select the domain which you purchased in the earlier steps. In case you have any other domains, you can choose that too. Don’t enter anything into the directory part.

Select the domain and click on check domain. If everything is OK, you will be redirected to the next screen. On the screen presented to you:

Check on the Show Advanced Options. Now You will see many other options.

Fill in your website details. Give a Admin Username, Password and Email which you can remember. Make sure the password is strong enough.

Make sure Create New Database for this Installation is Checked.

Read and agree to the terms of service.

Click on Install Now Button.

The installation process will start and will take 1-2 minutes. There is a chance that Bluehost will offer you something in between. If there is any pop suggesting any offer, simply close the pop up. Don’t close the browser.

Eventually, you will receive a message on screen saying ” Your Install is Complete”.

Now, you will be presented with a screen showing following information:

Blog URL

Login URL

Username

Password

This information will also be automatically mailed to your Email ID. However I still suggest you to note it down somewhere.

There may be some other notification coming up from MOJO marketplace. You can ignore all those once it says: “Install is Complete”.

Congratulations!

You have completed the WordPress setup on your domain name. Basically you just created a website for yourself.

Now you simply need to customize it according to your needs. Next step will concentrate on the this thing.

OPTIONAL: In case you purchased the domain name from some other website then you have to change the nameservers after the WordPress installation on Bluehost. Changing nameservers will ensure that you will be redirected on your new website.

Still having a Problem with something? Ask to me any time on : rock.pandey89@gmail.com or add me on Skype: satyenhacks to resolve your queries. I will answer every query to help you setup your WordPress site.

Installed WordPress…..What Happens Now?

Finally you made a website from scratch without any programming language. You have installed WordPress. So what happens now? How are you going to post your articles, images or videos? How are you going to configure your website/blog to make it look awesome? I am going to explain everything to make sure you start your blog in the right direction.

Here are all important things that you must know after setting up the WordPress:

Your Website/Blog login URL. You must have received in your email as well as in the last step when it said “Install is complete”. Normally the WordPress login url is : http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin

Publishing Your First Post

Changing the Permalink Structure

Changing Default Theme

Adding Important Widgets

Installing Important Plugins

How to Use Pages ( Essential Pages list)

Useful Resources to learn WordPress Tweaks

Login to your website using the login URL that you noted down in the last step or received in your email along with username ans password. Check out below screenshot as how it looks:

It’s from one of my website. Enter your Username and Password. Check Remember me and click on Login. It will take you to the dashboard of your website which has many options.

It may look little bit different. You can already see so many options on the dashboard. However you don’t have to do anything from here. You will be able to see below features in your blog dashboard:

Posts

Pages

Media

Appearance

Plugins

Users

Tools

Settings

Posts : It will allow you to post new articles, their tags and categories. All post will show you number of posts written by till date along with drafts and deleted posts. Tags and categories will be discussed late in this post.

Pages : It will allow you to add pages to your blog. You must have seen pages on many websites such as About Me, Contact Us, Privacy Policy, Popular Posts and likewise. You can create such pages using this option.

Media : It will help you see and upload images and videos in your file. You can also upload document such as PDF, Microsoft word document. Late on you can attach them in your blog post.

Appearance : It will allow you to change the look and feel of your website. You can customize almost everything on your website using appearance. You can change your themes, add new widgets and make awesome menus.

Plugins : Consider Plugins as small apps which bring additional functionality to your blog/website. You must have seen Facebook, Twitter and other sharing icons attached to blogs or flowing in the left hand side. All those things are done through plugins. There are thousands of them to use. Most of them are totally free.

Users : This section allows you to add users on different levels. You can make them administrators, moderator, authors or subscribers. However remember administrator can do all things even deleting all the content.

Tools : It’s mainly used for importing/exporting content from other website or from your own website. You don’t have to use this regularly.

Settings : You will find all setting related to your blog in this section. It will give many controls such as changing your website name, deciding how many articles to show on homepage, how your feed should look like etc. Most of the plugins that you will install also shown under settings only.

<<<<< Publishing Your First Post >>>>>

Here are simple steps to post your first article on your blog:

Click on POSTS in the left hand side options.

Click on ADD NEW.

Add POST TITLE, all other content in Body area.

Click on PUBLISH on right hand side option.

Check your website in the new tab.

<<<<< Changing the Permalink Structure >>>>>

Permalink structure is the web address of the articles on your website. WordPress tend to give crappy numbers in the URL which does not looks cool. Suppose you wrote an article and published it. WordPress automatically gives a URL to your article like http://besttechnicaladvice.com/?p=123 Does it look cool with numbers? Certainly NOT. You can change this to show your article title instead of P=123.

Click on SETTINGS from left hand side options. Now Click on PERMALINKS. Now you can see many types. Choose which suits you the best. Check the below pic.

<<<<< Changing Default Website Theme >>>>>

WordPress installs a default theme on your blog. However you can install another theme of your choice at any time. Suppose my interest is web designing so I will find a theme related to web designing which will be more suitable for my blog. Blog will look more professional. It help you increase readership and credibility too.

There are thousands of free WordPress themes. You can install them right from your WordPress website. Follow the below steps to install a new theme on your newly created blog:

Click on Appearance in left hand side options.

Click on Themes.

Click on ADD NEW option at the top.

WordPress will show you featured, popular and latest themes. You can also use filters and search for a specific theme.

If you liked any theme then hover your mouse on theme. If you want to have a quick look then click on PREVIEW option or directly click on Install. Click on Activate theme on next screen.

However free WordPress themes have certain limitations. They come with bugs and developer really doesn’t provide the support for everyone. If you want to make a change then you have to look it on internet because there is no support with the theme. Lots of blogs are installed with free WordPress Themes.

Premium WordPress Themes – There are many websites which provide premium themes along with lifetime support or 1 year support. I am personally using themes from below 2 websites (affiliate links):

MyThemeShop – I’m using SociallyViral and SteadyIncome (theme on this blog) of this website.

I recommend these 2 websites for purchasing a professional theme. Their designs support on Computers, tablets and mobiles as well. It’s a total responsive design. You don’t have to care about making different versions.

MyThemeShop Coupon for 51% Discount – MTS51OFF

You can use this coupon code for taking themes from mythemeshop. Click on buy now on theme selected by you. Click on redeem coupon. Remove the LIMITED TIME Coupon. Apply this Coupon. You will get straight 51% Off. I didn’t find any coupon codes for themeforest website.

<<<<< Adding Important Widgets >>>>>

Some of the important widgets are already installed in the sidebar of your blog. Some of the important widgets are Most popular posts, Category, Recent posts, Comments widgets. However you can follow the below steps to add more from other option provided in WordPress:

Click on Appearance.

Click on Widgets.

Now click on widgets which you want to add and click on add.

To remove, expand the widgets in the sidebar and homepage column and click on delete.

You can add different widgets on homepage and sidebar of single post. If you have a premium theme then you will also get some premium and specialized widgets like subscription widgets.

<<<<< Installing Important Plugins >>>>>

Here are list of some important plugins that you should install and activate. Few are already installed by default. Install other plugins from by clicking on :

Plugins >>> Add New >>> Search for Plugins >>> Install >>> Activate.

Akismet – Already installed – Activate it.

All In One SEO Pack by Michael Torbert

Disqus Comment System

Floating Social Buttons by Bhagirath

Google Plus Authorship

Google XML sitemaps

ShareThis by ShareThis Team

W3 Total Cache – It helps you to handle more traffic.

Google Analytics

Quick Adsense ( If you have Adsense to apply on)

You can add few more according to your requirement. After installing and activating, configure these plugins so that they should work properly. Simply installing them won’t do any good.

<<<<< How to Use Pages ( Essential Pages List) >>>>>

Pages are very important in any blog. It becomes even more important if you making it a personal website, a resume website, portfolio website such as photography, artist etc. In such cases, you want people to know you properly once they visit your website. To make that happen we use pages to display specific information.

Below are list of important pages that you can create on your blog/website:

Click on Pages on left hand side option >>>> ADD NEW

About Me

Contact Us

Biography ( Adding more details)

Resume (If student)

Blog

Hire Me page ( If student)

Portfolio ( To showcase your talent like photography, artist etc.)

Media/Press – (If you even gave interview in press or something like that)

Privacy Policy ( Very important to get accepted into many ad programs)

You can create page on any other important thing.

You can also set any of these pages as static homepage. Suppose you want to showcase your portfolio page then:

Now select the page to be shown on homepage. For all posts pages, select Blog Page (Latest posts will be listed on this page after being published because you are showing a static homepage.)

<<< Useful Resources and Website to Learn more about WordPress >>>

It’s very important to know every aspect of WordPress for better performance. I am going to provide you a list of websites which you can read and subscribe to learn about latest happenings and lots of tutorials on WordPress. It will surely help you out.